Sunday walk

After church today, Billy & Kevin Gleason headed out on a wild adventure in the back country. They are off to find some Indian cave drawings somewhere back in the forest beyond bluff camp. This afternoon was the bike ride back to bluff camp..... I think it is around 25 miles or so and mostly uphill. Tomorrow they will hike another 10 miles or so to the paintings and back before they get on their bikes to come home.
Once the guys left the house, Lauren, her girls & me and the boys set off on our own little adventure. We drove out on the ranch to the pasture with the wild mustangs. The kids all really enjoy the truck ride, it's fun to see their happy faces and listen to their busy chatter.

We walked through the pasture out to the random yurt on the ranch and that's where we found the mustangs. They aren't scary wild, they do get fed when the grass is all dead and there is nothing for them to eat. But they aren't ever ridden or anything, so wild enough. They were curious of us as we approached and came toward us. I happened to have eaten an apple and kept my core to feed to the brave one that would eat it from my hand. :) The kids all loved petting the ones that would let them and then we checked out the yurt from the outside... bummer it's locked up.

We walked around a bit more, enjoying the wild flowers and green grass all around us. It was such a warm and beautiful afternoon. It's been so warm this week, we went to the beach Thursday & Friday! We also went to UCSB's first baseball game of the season on Friday against BYU. The boys really enjoyed watching the game, asking questions and eating peanuts in the stand. We will have to go to more of the Gaucho games this season!
Billy did take his cell phone and called around 6:20pm from a peak top to say they were just about to descend into bluff camp. Brave guys, riding their bikes in the back forest county all afternoon and into the dark! I will be anxiously awaiting his phone call tomorrow sometime to let me know they are safe and on their way back. What a cool adventure.... one day, it will be me on the other bike instead of Kevin ;) Not anytime soon though.

Billy's Birthday

Billy's birthday was a couple weeks ago... but I did snap a couple pictures of our family party and thought I would post them :)

The boys went to the store with me and each picked out a couple presents for Dad, it was cute. William found a dart board and a new red tie. Zachary wanted to buy him a jump rope and some new exercise shorts. Jameson picked out a new shirt and shorts. I found the perfect yellow pillows for the couch in the family room! ;) ha ha. Well, my card was a good one.
Really, his best birthday present was getting the job offer from Montecito fire department! Can't beat that one!! We are all so excited for this new change in our family! :)

It was funfetti cake as usual. We all love funfetti for our birthdays!
Happy birthday to the most wonderful guy in my universe. I love you.

Monterey Bay Aquarium

My neighbor forwarded me an email informing me of home school days at the MB Aquarium months ago. There were a few dates in November, December & January. I didn't look into it until just a week or so ago, once I knew that one of the January dates would be a possible family trip. I got on the web site only to learn that reservations were full, but I could be put on a wait list. Well, we lucked out and got an email saying they had some tickets for us on Monday!
The tickets weren't good until 12:15, so we decided to do the trip in one long day. We left home about 9am and arrived in Monterey about 12:15. We invited Uncle Nathan along with us since he lives in Monterey and has Mondays off! (It was pretty awesome to have a 1:1 ratio at the aquarium!) We found a place to park right in front of the Aquarium, but needed to eat lunch first. Ate a quick bite at this café across the street that Nathan recommended, fueled up so we could enjoy the rest of the afternoon.
The boys enjoyed the rest of the afternoon exploring and enjoying all the exhibits in the aquarium. The open sea tank was amazing with the huge tunas and hammerhead sharks, gigantic sea turtle and largest school of fish I've ever seen. The jelly fish were beautiful and entrancing. The octopus, all the touch tanks, it was all so fun to see. We even went to a presentation on the great white shark project the aquarium is part of. It was fascinating information (and a little scary to see how close to home they come) We watched the otters that they had on exhibit as well as several otters out in the ocean we spied with binoculars. What fun and playful creatures they seem to be! We watched the otters in the exhibit crunching on ice as they glided and turned in the water. One otter decided to just drag the entire bucket of ice into the water and play/swim in it!

By the end of the afternoon, the boys were tired, a little wet and totally satisfied. They got to see and do and climb and run as they learned about the creatures of the ocean. We left the aquarium at closing time, 5pm, and drove uncle Nathan home. Zachary and Jameson were both passed out within that 10 minute drive. Billy and William grabbed some snacks from the grocery store for the drive home and off we went, home by 9pm.
It was a long day, but boy was it worth it! Thank you Monterey Bay Aquarium for hosting Home school days and treating us to a day of hands on learning. We may just have to do this again next year!

Learning Excitment

William has been doing great in school. He is seldom resistant to start and complete school lessons each day and seems to be grasping and leaning in leaps and bounds. Zachary has also taken a strong interest in wanting to learn and do his workbooks. He will sit at his little table in the office while I am teaching William and complete page after page in his school books. It puts a big smile on my face to see these boys so excited to learn.
Williams penmanship is very nice. He loves to practice writing and will write in his notebooks during the day. I will be doing something in the house and he will coming running to ask me how to spell a certain word or two. He writes sweet notes for his brothers and for Billy and I too. It's so fun!

On another note- Ian, Stephanie and Emmett came to visit for the weekend :) We went to the zoo on Friday, always fun! Saturday was wet and gloomy, but we enjoyed hanging out and playing all together. The boys took a bath with their cousin which is always a cute photo op.

Tomorrow, we will expand our learning at the Monterey Bay Aquarium! We got free tickets through their home school days- Score!!

Christmas time

December flew by and I can't believe that tomorrow is the last day of the year 2014!
This Christmas season has been a nice and mellow one for the most part. I personally have been struggling with staying healthy... but I am feeling almost back to normal as of this evening. I feel a little cheated, we didn't travel on purpose so that we wouldn't get sick... but I got sick anyway. The boys got a little sick earlier in the month but seemed to bounce back pretty quickly. I'm going to blame my pregnancy for hanging onto it longer than everyone else.
We enjoyed a nice ward Christmas dinner/ social, a few service opportunities, sharing Christmas dinner with the new Elders in our ward & Bryce (Billy's old landlord)... and of course the company of Grandpa Wrenn & Uncle Nathan for the past 5 days :) We were supposed to go up to Ian & Stephanie's for Christmas eve, but I just didn't think I was healthy enough at that point to make the drive and have a late night away before Christmas day.

 

The boys were easy to please this Christmas. When asked what they thought they would like for Christmas, responses like "a pack of gum, please" and "my very own clay" made me smile. William, Zachary and Jameson were just so happy and kept it so simple. My favorite thing I watched this Christmas was the 3 boys, secretly making little drawings, notes and paper gifts for each other. They would sneak them out and stuff them into each others stockings when no one was looking. It was neat to watch the excitement of giving as well as the excitement to see the brother discover their gift on Christmas morning. It made my whole Christmas complete.

Billy and I celebrated 8 years of marriage yesterday! We had Grandpa Wrenn and Uncle Nathan to babysit for us, so we took advantage. We went mattress shopping and then out to a nice dinner. There is a new Sleep Number bed store in town and we gave it a shot. I think we spent at least an hour in there and this afternoon I took the plunge and we ordered a new bed. I'm looking forward to the delivery in a couple weeks! Billy made me a sweet card, as he always does. I finally finished (just about) the painting that I started for him last year for our anniversary! Whoops. Had to add another star for another year :) but I like the way it looks.

Looking forward to another great year this 2015.

The aftermath of "the big storm"

We are back up and running on line after what seemed like a long 6 days. I am not a big computer person, but there are certain things I do on line and on line only. William missed a few days of school (which he was not sad about at all), property management communication and trying to finish up the bills and spreadsheets was a no go, on line banking, email communication... anyway, we survived.

The storm racked havoc on our yard. The biggest surprise when we woke up was opening the front door to our pepper tree laying across the entire front yard! We all were pretty shocked that no one woke up when it fell. I think because the storm was so violent, windy and noisy, it took forever for us to fall asleep that night. Things kept hitting the side of the house and the trees were jerking so hard in the wind it was just a loud night in general.

Our fence was another sad sight to see. We had worked slowly all summer long getting the fence up and complete around the back yard. Luckly it's not too broken, just sagging, which can be fixed with a little extra digging and concrete around the posts.

It's been a slow clean up process. One of the ranch hands came with a tractor the next day to clear the drive way of the tree while Billy ran the chain saw and cut it up a bit. But now the drive way has remained a muddy mess and we still have to do a little more cutting to the tree to remove it completely off the grass.

We are just so blessed that the tree didn't fall on the house (or the cars)! We went to bed praying that the trees would stay in the ground, or at least not hit the house... our prayers were answered. The 60year old pepper tree missed the corner bedroom where all the boys were sound asleep by inches! We woke up saying prayers of thanks that we were all kept safe that night.

Moments that make me smile

Just a few photos from the last month of moments that made me smile.

                                                      Loving Brothers!

                      Jameson riding the razor scooter, he is always so happy!

Cousins in the golf cart, driving around the park in between photo sessions

              The boys enjoying the Santa Barbara annual Christmas parade :)